Christianity instead of Psychology

When we started this site years ago, we were trying to figure out how to improve our marriage and our lives. To do that—our religion at the time (mormonism) really wasn't helping—we turned to psychology. We read self help books, we wrote articles, and it worked: Kelli achieved her weight goals, we made improvements to how we ran our house, our marriage improved, and the most surprising benefit of that journey was that it pushed us out of mormonism. The problem though, was that even with all these new tools, we realized we had a deeper problem—a heart problem. Selfishness and pride kept rearing their ugly heads. But as we started to regularly study the Bible and truly try to follow Jesus, our focus changed from 'fixing our marriage' to 'following Jesus'… and our marriage improved as a byproduct.

What we discovered is that even the most sophisticated psychological tools can be weaponized by a selfish heart. The Bible warns us that, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). With a heart still bent toward getting our own way, we could use active listening, not to understand each other, but to skillfully win an argument. The psychological techniques became new tactics in an old battle, not a true path to peace.

What we were discovering is that following Christ isn't about adopting a new set of rules; it's about undergoing a radical heart transformation. It’s to become a "new creation" where "the old has passed away" and "the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). It's about God's promise to "remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26), something no self-help book can ever do.

This journey helped us see why our previous efforts fell short. We were only managing the symptoms, not addressing the root cause. Following Jesus helped us confront the sinful nature that produces what the Bible calls the "works of the flesh," including "enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries" (Galatians 5:19-20). We realized psychology could give us tools to manage this fallout, but only God could change the underlying condition.

We began to see that the Bible presents marriage not as a partnership for mutual self-fulfillment, but as a living mirror of Christ’s relationship with the Church. This high calling pushed us beyond just being better partners. The command is explicit: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). This isn't a technique; it is a spiritual discipline of sacrificial love that redefines the whole purpose of marriage.

This divine blueprint caused the exact shift in perspective that our introduction describes. Our focus moved away from "what can I get from this marriage?" to a spirit of genuine humility. As Philippians 2:3-4 instructs, we were called to "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

By following Jesus, we gained an external standard for our love that transcended our own feelings or the latest trends. We were now called to "not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2). This provided a robust, unchanging foundation for our marriage when our own emotions would ebb and flow.

This doesn't mean we threw away everything we learned from psychology. Far from it. Once we began to seriously address the "heart problem," those psychological insights became incredibly powerful. With a spirit of humility, communication techniques transformed from potential weapons into instruments of deeper connection. Psychology found its proper place as a valuable aid in how to apply the why of Christ-like love.

Ultimately, one of the things we had learned about happiness, "stop trying to be happier—and you will be". Is similar to what we have learned about marriage. We needed to stop focusing so much on improving our marriage, and focusing on Jesus instead.